1) Preamble:
There are certain conditions adult men face that adult women and children do not. These conditions can be summarized by the acronym SPEZ
2) SPEZ:
2A) Success Object
“As a man, there is no price too high to pay for success, for failure is death emotionally, spiritually, metaphysically and reproductively. You are a success object. Never forget it. Accept you are powerless to change it, for nature has designated it.” -Illimitable Man
Women and children are loved unconditionally, men are loved under the condition that they are successful. If you are a man who is unsuccessful, nobody will care whether you live or die.
Generally speaking success is measured in worldly wealth: money, power, status.
There are many women who make the choice to pursue success.. Men have no choice.
2B) Pareto Distribution
Among men you will find that success is pareto distributed; a minority of men are winners living towards the top of the macro dominance hierarchy (relatively rich, high status, powerful), while a majority of men are losers living towards the bottom of the macro dominance hierarchy (relatively poor, low status, powerless).
The overwhelming statistical probability is that you will lose, but in the unlikely event that you win you will win big. Your life is in some sense a very long version of ‘The Hunger Games’.
Do you ever get the feeling that the Gods are laughing at you, and are placing bets on how long it will take for you to realize that you’re doomed?
Men living towards the bottom of dominance hierarchies have this feeling every minute of their lives.
2C) Expendable
As an adult male, your life is expendable.
The lives of females are reproductively critical, while the lives of males are reproductively expendable.
If you are suffering for whatever reason, you will be granted far less compassion and assistance than a woman or child would be, and this will be the case regardless of whether you are successful or unsuccessful.
Women have an instinct to protect children. Men have an instinct to protect women and children. Nobody has an instinct to protect men; as a man you must look out for yourself because nobody else will bother with saving you.
There is a point in your life, probably around the age of 16, when people will stop viewing you as a boy and start viewing you as a man. This transformation is often quite painful, since as a boy your life was viewed as critical but as a man your life is viewed as expendable.
“Men remember being boys. Man has a lucid perspective in comparing the diminished affection of his adulthood to the greater bounty of his childhood. Women do not experience such a significant loss of affection.” -Illimitable Man
2D) Zero Sum
Success is an intrinsically zero sum game in that a man is only considered ‘successful’ if he is more successful than other men.
A billionaire has high status because most men are not billionaires; if we created a society where everyone was a billionaire, a billionaire would have only mediocre status.
In the pursuit of success (worldly wealth) other men are not your allies; they are your competitors.
There are those who will claim to not care about their relative level of wealth, status, or power; they claim to only care about their absolute level of wealth. They are lying, mostly to themselves. Whether you admit it or not you do care intensely about your relative status. There is a counter in your brain that tracks your relative status in the hierarchy you live in. The human species evolved to have this counter before it evolved the ability to breath; tracking your status is more natural to your mind than breathing.
Win or lose your life will be a relentless war; if you are low status you will be spiritually tortured by your failure, if you are high status you will have to endlessly fight to maintain your position.
The competition for status (the game of power) will continue until death; until then, perform well to live well.
3) Capitalism As Status Competition:
One underappreciated virtue of capitalism is this; it gives men a venue where they can compete for power and status that is productive rather than destructive.
For most of human history, the way men competed for status was warfare; whoever was the best at killing people was the winner.
Capitalism, a competition where whoever can make the most money is the winner, is certainly a better way of running civilization than endless combat.
4) Conclusion:
If you are a man, never go looking for sympathy. It is unlikely to win you assistance; for more likely is that it will win you scorn. Women and children who are weak are helped, men who are weak are scorned.
If as a man you are the beneficiary of some form of altruism, be eternally grateful to the person who helped you; such people are extraordinarily rare.